


Everything We Dream

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: And sort of enjoys fucking with Hannibal, No not like that (yet), Post-Finale, The awkwardness of figuring out what comes next, When your murder-suicide didn't work out, Will figures out he has some leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 11:52:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I’ll be back when I can.  Try not to die on me, Hannibal. Consider that my first instruction.”</p><p>And Will is gone and Hannibal is alone with the rising sun.  He closes his eyes and concentrates on surviving another second, and another one. He’s just been given something very interesting to live for, if he can make it to morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

> _It’ll be everything_  
>  _we dream the morning after, even if we fall_  
>  _into the sea—we are boats, remember?_  
>  _We are pirates. We move in nautical miles._  
>  _Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,_  
>  _the rocket’s red, already the world entire._  
>  _\- Oliver Bendorf, "Catch a Body"_  
> 

There’s a moment to think “Oh. Oh, of course this is what he would do” as Will rocks them backward. Hannibal’s feet lose the ground and for the space of a breath they’re flying before the fall begins.

He hits the ground hard, a shock of pain throughout his body, every molecule of air gone from his lungs. His vision goes black and he’s gone.

Some time later thought and vision return. Breath a bit less so; he’s still gasping for air. He holds very still, taking stock of what he can. He’s not in the water. They hit a ledge, maybe? He’s in too much pain all over to figure out immediately what his specific injuries might be. There’s the gunshot still, a hot core of pain that eclipses almost everything else, but he’s good at compartmentalizing and if he forces himself to ignore that pain there are others. He wiggles fingers and toes. They seem to still be there but something’s not right with his left leg.

He lifts his head slightly and his vision goes blurry around the edges, so he lies down again quick, but he saw a shape nearby that he thinks might be Will. It wasn’t moving. Slowly and painfully he reaches out, his hand crawling slowly across the distance to feel for Will. His hand comes to rest in what feels like Will’s hair. There’s stickiness. Blood. Hard to say if it’s Will’s or Dolarhyde’s or his own. Will doesn’t move. He can’t tell if Will is breathing, from where he’s lying.

Hannibal lets the blackness take him again, sliding under to the sound of waves and a terribly lonely sounding bird cry in the distance, fingers still entwined in Will’s hair.

When he comes to again it’s brighter out, nearly morning. He can breathe better but he’s very cold. His hands are empty.

He starts to push himself up again when he hears Will’s voice: “Hannibal.” Just his name. It’s not enough to get any sort of read on the emotion behind the voice. It’s coming from his left. He eases very slowly up on one elbow, hissing at the pain of the movement, head swimming in protest.

They're on some kind of rocky ledge, big enough to have caught their fall, far enough down the cliff face to make the catching hurt. Will’s sitting with his back to the cliff, knees pulled into his chest, arms around them, compacting himself tight. He’s wiped some of the blood off his face but it’s still matted in his hair and caked around the stab wound on his cheek.

Hannibal scans over Will quickly; there’ll be a lot of blood loss and probably other injuries from the fall, concussion is a concern until he can check that head wound, but it doesn’t appear to be anything worse. It takes him a minute to remember that he’s worried about the health of the man who just threw them both to their deaths. He barks a laugh when he remembers, and the laugh turns into a cough, which hurts so badly he revises his injury estimate to include a cracked rib or two.

“You’re looking well,” he finally manages when the cough and the pain die down.

“I landed on you. You’re a terrible psychiatrist but a very good emergency landing pad, apparently.” Will’s voice is still even and all but unreadable. He’s looking over Hannibal, out at the ocean, as if he can’t be bothered.

“I am an excellent psychiatrist, Will. My goal for our therapy was just not the same as yours.” Apparently his feelings are bruised along with everything else.

“How far back?”

“How far back did our goals diverge?”

“Yes. The truth, please. I’m not likely to go telling anyone what you tell me, at this point.”

Hannibal considers this. “This doesn’t seem like the place for this conversation. But it was early. Perhaps our first session. My goals changed over time as I came to realize your capabilities, but I suspect they were never precisely in line with yours.”

Will nods absently. He seems very calm. He unwinds his arms from his knees and stands up, carefully, back still pressed against the cliff face. He’s moving slowly and seems to be in some pain of his own but all major body parts seem to be present and accounted for. “What did you think about? When we were falling.”

Hannibal doesn’t particularly like being questioned, but he’s still dizzy with freedom and fresh air and pain and dried blood on his lips and the sight of Will in arm’s reach, no glass between them. He also seems to be the more gravely injured of the two. He doesn’t have much leverage. “There wasn’t much time. I thought that I had underestimated you. I tried to remember how to position myself for a water landing so we’d both survive. I thought about Francis. And you?”

“It was...odd. I was so sure, the moment I took us down, that it was the only thing left to do. And then the second I’d done it I wanted to live. I’ve never completely wanted to live, you know. Not since I was too little to understand how different I was. Living’s always been painful. But once it was over I wanted it back. ” 

Ridiculously given where they are and what they’ve been through, Hannibal feels pride and joy. He’s wanted for so long to see Will torn open and transformed into something new. It’s beautiful even through his pain. “I’m glad. That opens up interesting new avenues for your therapy, Will. I would like to discuss that with you, if we could get off this rock, and if we could try not killing each other for a while.”

Will steps closer to Hannibal. He could help him up. He could roll him over the edge and down into the sea. He looks thoughtful, perhaps not sure himself which he’s going to do. Finally he sits down again next to Hannibal and studies him, voice and face detached and clinical, not a hint of how blood-wild he’d been a few hours ago with Francis. But he almost absently touches Hannibal, rubbing a thumb back and forth over the back of Hannibal’s hand. 

“I don’t think we’ll be resuming therapy together, Hannibal. I’m not sure what I want to do with you but it won’t be that. As for getting off this ledge, I’ve been looking. There’s something off to the left there. Calling it a “trail” would be generous but I went partway while you were unconscious. It goes partway up and then there are some handholds. I think I could get back up to the house. It wouldn’t be pretty but I can manage it. Probably. If my shoulder holds up.” Almost as an afterthought he looks down at Hannibal. “You can’t make it, not with that leg and that gunshot. I’ll be leaving you here.”

Hannibal lies back down, slowly, looking up at the clouds, acutely conscious of the gentle touch on his hand at odds with everything else Will is saying and doing. “So you stayed with me to tell me you’re not staying? That suggests a certain amount of indecision, Will.”

“Don’t psychoanalyze me, Dr. Lecter,” Will murmurs, quiet and thoughtful. “I actually stayed to give you a choice. I’m going up without you either way. I think by the time they get here you’ll be dead. I can make up a story where I’m the hero. Jack won’t completely believe me but he’ll go along with it. I’ll be free of you and everything else. I can go back to my life or start a new one. It sounds...pleasant.”

“That’s not a choice.” 

“No, it’s not. The other choice is I can come back for you. I imagine you have rope in the house. A first aid kit. Splint supplies. Probably some very good drugs. I think I could get them lowered down to you. I think we could probably get you patched up enough and pain-free enough to get you up to the top.” He sounds approximately as involved as if he’s discussing whether to have white or red wine with dinner.

“If the choice is mine, I prefer the second option. There are several lengths of good rope in the basement and plenty of medical supplies for the both of us. You’ll need stitches and they’ll heal better if I do them than if you try to do them yourself. I can also direct you to the safe. There’s money enough to take us anywhere.”

The movement of Will’s thumb stops but he doesn’t let go of Hannibal’s hand. “Yes, I assumed you’d have money and papers here. You meant for us to come here with Abigail, didn’t you? That night.”

His vision is growing blurry around the edges again, pain and exhaustion and blood loss nibbling at the edges of his consciousness, but he struggles to stay awake for what may be the last conversation he ever has with Will or anyone else. “Yes. We would have come here first. She was happy here. You would have been too. And then we’d have gone somewhere else together. Which we can still do. Will, I don’t think I have a great deal of time left. You need to make your choice.”

“I said the choice was yours, Hannibal. And it is. I’m ready to live. I think it would serve both of our needs to travel together, for a while. But I don’t know that it’s a good idea. You’ve been caged too long. I’m not sure you remember how to impersonate a human being. I’m not sure you can keep a low enough profile to keep us from being found.”

If he were a little less dizzy, Hannibal would point out that he’s been keeping himself under the radar for a very long time. But this doesn’t seem the time to argue. “I am very good at what I do, Will. You didn’t know for a long time.”

“I think I always knew. I just didn’t want to know that I knew.” The clinical look again. Will suddenly presses a palm against Hannibal’s side, hard, and the pain lancing through him chases the fog away for the moment. “I will do my best to rescue you under the condition that you will then do exactly what I tell you. You will not blow our cover. You will not harm my family, or Alana’s family. You will not go on some bloody revenge spree. We will get out, quickly and quietly, and I will decide what happens after that.”

Hannibal nods, all the movement he can muster. “I agree. I really don’t think there’s a lot of time, though. Can we work out the finer points later?”

Will climbs to his feet and Hannibal looks up at him silhouetted against the sky, hard and cold and holding Hannibal’s life or death in his hand. If he lives long enough he’ll sketch this view as many times as it takes to get it right. It’s breathtaking.

“I’m going now. It may take me a while to get up there and find everything. I’ll be back when I can. Try not to die on me, Hannibal. Consider that my first instruction.”

And Will is gone. He hears some footsteps, some pebbles shaking loose perhaps, and then he’s alone with the rising sun. He closes his eyes and concentrates on surviving another second, and another one. He’s just been given something very interesting to live for, if he can make it to morning.


	2. Chapter 2

The drugs they take with them from the cliff house are very good indeed. Hannibal is happily ensconced in the back seat of the car they stole in a shopping plaza parking lot several miles back, Hannibal delighted to find that Will’s good at hotwiring cars, Will muttering something about skills you pick up on the Homicide force. 

It’s a nondescript car and doesn’t purr the way Hannibal likes his motors to, but he’s not in any condition to really care. Mostly he’s warm and comfortable stretched out in the back seat so his leg doesn’t have to bend, wrapped in a blanket, stitched up and patched up and filled to the gills with the very good drugs, listening to the steady thrum of rainfall on the roof. He tips his head back against the window and watches the raindrops run down toward him, lights out of focus behind the raindrops, bright and blurry like fireworks as they speed by. The kaleidoscopic patterns of the raindrops are very absorbing. 

Will has the radio turned on low, listening for any news reports about their flight, but at the moment it’s some pop song. Will glances over his shoulder at a red light and catches Hannibal bobbing his head in time to the music, eyes a bit glazed, one hand over his head tracing the raindrops down the window. He lets out a snort of laughter. “Jesus, Hannibal, I think we might have overdosed you. The blackmail video I could take of you right now, the fancy cannibal stoned and listening to Top 40 radio..."

Hannibal smiles beatifically. “As the only medical professional in the car, I believe I am dosed to the appropriate level for the severity of my injuries.” Even he can hear his words slurring together and he considers that for a moment, eyes struggling to focus. “I do concede that it was probably a wise decision to have me stitch your injuries before I took the second dose. I appear to be slightly unsteady.”

Will faces forward again and glances at his reflection in the rearview mirror, a neat row of stitches on his cheek. “Yes. Heaven forbid I not be pretty anymore,” he says with a slight eye roll, as the light changes and they start to move again.

“You were lovely the first time I saw you. So angry at my presence. That I might have the temerity try to breach the fort of your unusual mind. I wasn’t sure whether to comb your hair and buy you a proper shirt, or to break into your house and eat your brain. I thought for a while I might do both.” He’s drifting, talking to himself as much as Will, slipping in and out of that memory.

“We’re not reminiscing right now. We’re escaping. And you are unbelievably high, and apparently you say things like "temerity" when you're stoned. When we stop for the night, you are staying in the car while I get us a room.”

“You still need proper shirts,” Hannibal goes on, unperturbed. “We’ll both have to get new things. I’m going to pick yours."

Will refuses to get drawn any further into a conversation about his sartorial choices with his doped-up passenger, and they return to driving silently through the rain. Hannibal drifts, unanchored in time and memory. The raindrops on his window become blood drops and they sizzle like cooking oil and he considers what part of Francis he would have fed to Will first if there had been time. He sinks deeper and is gone again.

He surfaces from a hazy warm memory-dream of the mingled scents of blood and flowers when the car door shuts and jars him back to awareness. Will is buckling his seat belt and putting the car back into motion before he realizes they were stopped.

“Wake up, Hannibal. I can’t drive any more tonight and you’d be a menace behind the wheel so I grabbed us a room. I’m just going to pull around to the back.”

Hannibal’s head feels clouded but much less so than before. It occurs to him that there’s no particular reason Will needs to know that. It may be advantageous to play up his injuries for a while. He peers through the window, where the sizzling blood drops of his hallucination have turned back into streaks of rain. It’s not the seediest motel he’s ever set foot in by any means, but usually if he’s in a place like this it’s for a kill. He’d have chosen somewhere nicer. Most of the places he has ever been with Will are safely stored away in his memory palace but this one, he thinks, he will exempt.

It’s a ground-floor room and they get inside without too much trouble, Hannibal leaning on Will heavily. It would be nice if it were pretense but he really is still in a lot of pain. He’ll need more medication although perhaps not quite as much as before; he hadn’t meant to get quite that unmoored.

There’s no real baggage to bring in, just a single bag with the medical supplies, money, papers, and a change of clothes for each of them. Will manages that and by the time he returns, Hannibal has taken over the bed. He stretches out his injured leg and peels off his jacket, which is soaked with rain from their short but slow walk from the car.

Will shuts the door, drops the bag on the bed next to Hannibal, and then looks him over with a half-smile. “You know, you’re completely out of place here. Even without the three piece suit you just look wrong. I cannot imagine anyone looking less comfortable in a shitty little motel. Queen Elizabeth, maybe.”

Hannibal shrugs and begins digging through the bag for fresh bandages and more pills. “I’ve been in worse places than this. Possibly not since I was a child, though. Please tell me you paid cash."

Will nods. “Cash. Fake names. Whole nine yards. We’re not fooling anyone but I’m pretty sure the people who tend to check in here in pairs late at night, with cash and fake names and no luggage, are here for an entirely different reason. I was unmemorable except for the stitches and I tried to keep those turned away as much as I could.”

“I should look at them. Come over here.” Hannibal waves Will over but Will maintains his spot, leaning against the door, dripping rain like one of his strays.

“They’re fine, and I’m not sure you’re sobered up enough for any more doctoring tonight. Although you’ve stopped singing so that’s a plus. Stay put. I saw a vending machine on the way in. I’m going to go find something that resembles food.”

Hannibal opens his mouth to protest and is cut off. 

“You can eat it or not. If you want to starve until tomorrow morning, that’s your call. We’re not going back out in that rain tonight. We’re going to lay low here and in the morning we’ll figure out what’s next. I want your opinion but I’m going to make the decision, and you’re going to shut up about it once I do. Take another pill if you need it, but if you start singing again I may smother you with a pillow.”

He steps back out into the night and Hannibal watches him go. He’s used to uncertain anxious-to-please Will, and to devious trap-setting Will, and to angry cornered Will. He's grown fond of all three. Each has a unique scent and savor. Straightforward Will is something new and interesting, to be observed for now and obeyed until it seems more interesting not to. 

Hannibal turns to the task at hand, checking over his assorted injuries. Most of the patching he did at the cliff house with Will’s help seems sound, but he replaces a couple of the bandages that soaked through, making a half-hearted effort not to get any blood on the sheets. He has to assume the awful scratchy linens have had worse on them, but leaving their room looking like a crime scene won’t help their attempts to lay low.

By the time Will comes back bearing an array of horrifying food items in crinkly cellophane, Hannibal has tidied himself up, dry-swallowed another painkiller and antibiotics against infection, and slid under the thin blanket. For someone who’s spent the day mostly out of his mind in the back seat of a car hallucinating feathered deer and concocting fever-dream dinner party menus, he’s exhausted. 

He waves off Will’s offer to share the offending edibles, preferring to wait and hope for at least the slight improvement of a diner breakfast in the morning, and slips back into the drowsy half-consciousness of the really good drugs. He watches through half-lidded eyes as Will tears into something called “Funyuns” with apparent gusto, and then disappears into the bathroom for a quick shower.

Hannibal’s nearly gone under completely when the weight of Will sliding into the bed brings him partway from the haze. Will wriggles a bit in the sheets, finding a comfortable sleeping position, and Hannibal’s nostrils are suddenly full of the scents of soap and cheap shampoo and clean Will. He is pursued into sleep by the scents and they wind tendrils deep into his dreams.


	3. Chapter 3

The plate of scrambled eggs and home fries lands in front of Hannibal with a clink of cheap china on plexiglass-covered table. Someone has scratched a misspelled obscenity in the tabletop. There’s a chip in the plate. The fork has a bent tine. Hannibal waves it mutely toward Will: _See what I put up with for you?_

Will looks downright chipper after a night’s sleep and a change of clothes. Hannibal’s still feeling rough around the edges (and in the middle, and everywhere between) but he’s forgoing the heavy painkillers today, making do with a lighter cocktail that blurs and elides the worst of the pain while leaving him mostly clear-headed. 

Will appears to not notice or not care that Hannibal is being forced to eat with substandard cutlery, so Hannibal sighs and digs into his breakfast. After years of institutional food he looks forward to something better, even if it’s made with entirely standard grocery store ingredients and none of his own butchery. But he’s starving and this will do. He summons up sense memories of better meals and occupies himself there for a time.

After they've made inroads into breakfast in silence, Will asks Hannibal about safe house locations, of which he correctly assumes there are several. Hannibal does not mention the one in New Orleans, keeping a secret in reserve, but he lays out the other options. They settle on the Sonoma house as their eventual destination. They'll drive cross-country rather than risk the airports. Once Hannibal can take driving shifts they'll make good time.

Hannibal is extremely agreeable on all counts, because what he really wants he waits to bring up until the planning is concluded. Will is draining the last dregs of his coffee when Hannibal leans forward and asks, "Might I make a suggestion? You may of course decline it."

Will's not letting him get away with that. "I know I may. Those were my terms, so don't act like you're doing me a favor. But yes, I’d like to hear your suggestion."

He selects words carefully. The way this goes will tell him a lot about what the shape of their time together will be. Also there are certain things one can only discuss obliquely in a diner. "My former colleague and travelling companion, Dr. Du Maurier."

Will's face goes a little tight and Hannibal is pleased. He's not sure if Will is jealous of Bedelia or angry at her or has just taken a dislike to her for one of those inexplicable chemical reasons that people sometimes scrape against each other’s sharp edges, but it will make this easier. 

Will reaches for Hannibal's coffee mug and starts drinking from that since his own is empty. It would be rude from anyone else; from Will it just seems intimate. He puts down the mug but keeps his hands curled around it where Hannibal’s own fingers rested a few minutes earlier, his fingerprints overwriting Hannibal’s. "I've had some conversations with the good doctor recently. Frankly, I don’t think she’s missed you." 

"I believe it may be worth scheduling a joint session with Dr. DuMaurier before we head west. She has an inconvenient amount of information in her files relating to both of us. It might be useful to address that situation."

"She's not an idiot. She'll leave town at the first opportunity."

"Which is why I am suggesting that we make our visit soon. I believe we may have a little time. Curiosity and the need to arrange her affairs will hold her for a little while."

They let the conversation trail off as the waitress stops by the table. She refills both mugs, but Will keeps drinking from Hannibal's. Hannibal can't tell if it's some sort of dominance assertion tactic from his dog training repertoire, or just grabbing the mug nearest to hand without thinking. He's distracted and annoyed at being distracted, and most of all annoyed that he can't tell if Will wants it that way.

Will considers the suggestion and finally allows, “I want us moving west as soon as possible, but maybe we should make an exception for Bedelia." Hannibal can tell he wants to make the exception; he takes another forkful of subpar potatoes and lets Will talk himself into it. "I wish you'd mentioned this before we got two states away."

"I apologize. I was in no state to plan much of anything yesterday. I'm trying a lighter dosage today."

"I had inferred that from the fact that you haven't tried to pet my hair yet this morning," Will responds drily. Hannibal is half appalled to think he may have actually done that, and half tempted to do it now. Being too sore to reach across the table makes the decision for him. He stays put. He steeples his fingers to keep from snatching his coffee back.

"So you'll consider a house call?"

"Let's finish up here and get on the road. I'll think about it." They finish up, pay cash, tip well but not memorably well, and leave.

Hannibal doesn't say anything further about Bedelia. He's planted the idea and it's just a matter of seeing if Will wants to run with it. He thinks Will, newly awakened to his capacity to enjoy bloodshed, and presented with a target he both dislikes and can justify to his better angels as a form of distasteful but necessary self-defense, will resist the urge to resist his urges. But either result will be informative. 

Back in the tiny motel room, they do a final round of clean-up, checking stitches and splinting and bandages. It's oddly intimate yet detached and medical. Having determined they're as healthy as they're going to be until time and healing mechanisms do their work, they head to the car. Hannibal feels he might be able to make the walk on his own today but he leans heavily against Will anyway.

He settles into the corner of the back seat again, less for the leg room this time than for the opportunity to watch Will unobserved, and does not ask where they are headed.

He permits himself a small smile, barely a twitch of his lips, as Will swings the car around without comment, back the way they came, toward Baltimore and Bedelia and promises Hannibal would prefer to keep sooner rather than later.

**Author's Note:**

> This was intended to be a one shot post-finale story but I'm curious where they end up, so I may come back to tell myself that story. I hope you'll come back to listen.
> 
> Come hang out with me at [my tumblr](http://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com) if you're so inclined.


End file.
